Ted Cruz decries ‘nasty, false attack ads’ from David Dewhurst

STEPHENVILLE – National tea party favorite Ted Cruz proclaimed Monday that the battle for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate is a two-man race between him and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

“We’re headed to a runoff,” Cruz told a forum that Dewhurst skipped, devoting time instead to Dallas.

Cruz said that’s the case despite being peppered with Dewhurst ads that Cruz described as “nasty, false attack ads trying to convince every Texan that I’m a red Chinese communist who wants to eat your children.”

Contending the most motivated conservatives will turn out in a runoff, and they’ll pick him, Cruz told reporters later, “Victory in this case is going to a runoff.”

Dewhurst, who has dipped deeply into his pockets to try to clinch the GOP nod in the May 29 primary, must get a majority there or face a July 31 matchup with the second-place finisher.

The lieutenant governor has pointed to his record as staunchly conservative on fiscal and social issues, such as abortion. Cruz contended Texans are looking to him as a conservative fighter as opposed to Dewhurst, whom he suggested is a “milquetoast” politician.

In Stephenville and at a later stop at a Dallas County Republican Party‘s executive committee meeting, Cruz said an endorsement by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin ignited momentum for his candidacy. Cruz in Dallas said the race “is going unbelievably, crazily, dizzyingly well.”

As Cruz projected confidence, former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert also contended he’s got the momentum to win a runoff spot.

“We know that we’ve got momentum going into this. We’re going to be in the runoff,” Leppert said in Stephenville, although he added, “It’s going to be close to get into the runoff.”

Leppert hit hard at Cruz at the forum, using the same criticism that Dewhurst flings at the former Texas solicitor general, whose résumé is highlighted by cases he pressed under Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Leppert brought up a case in which Cruz is involved in his private practice as an appellate lawyer. Cruz is listed as counsel of record for a Chinese tire company sued by an American businessman. The businessman, Jordan Fishman, won a $26 million judgment in a lawsuit claiming the company copied his tire designs. Cruz’s firm is representing him on appeal, and Dewhurst slams Cruz as siding with a Chinese company that cost American jobs.

Leppert also contended that Cruz was only a staff member in Abbott’s office on the cases he brags about on issues such as national sovereignty.

“He was a staffer who was never in charge of those,” Leppert said, adding that Cruz now is trying to minimize his involvement in the Fishman case that “you’re really in charge of — you sided with a communist company.”

Asked to respond by reporters, Cruz asserted that he is not the lead lawyer in that case and added of Leppert’s criticism, “It is not surprising that other candidates take shots at the candidates who are the frontrunners. This race has become a two-man race. There is a reason Dewhurst is focusing all of his firepower on me … he is terrified that conservatives are uniting behind our campaign.”

Cruz highlighted an Internet poll by the University of Texas/Texas Tribune that showed Dewhurst leading Cruz by 40 percent to 31 percent among likely Republican primary voters, with Leppert at 17 percent.

The margin of error was plus or minus 5.92 percentage points on the question, and some question the methodology of Internet polling.

Internet polls are becoming more common “because they are cheaper to administer. They are, however, treated with suspicion because they allow less confidence that the sample from which the pollsters draw is truly random. Nonetheless, the poll released Monday was entirely plausible,” said Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson by email.

Dewhurst dismissed the latest poll when he went by a North Dallas early voting location Monday, television station WFAA reported. But the television station also said Dewhurst didn’t say he’d win the primary outright, saying, “Again, whether we’re able to win this race with 50 percent plus really is going to depend upon how many people turn out.”

Mark P. Jones, political science professor at Rice University, said, the poll “conforms very well to my read on the race. There will be a runoff, and it will be between Dewhurst and Cruz.”

“Leppert has performed admirably,” Jones said by email, “but Dewhurst’s personal wealth and dominant status as the near-universal establishment conservative favorite has inhibited Leppert’s ability to expand his base of support.”

Jones said of the poll itself, “After almost a month without any independent surveys, the publication of the UT/TT Poll provides the public with a clear picture of the dynamics of the U.S. Senate race as we enter the homestretch.”

Jones said the firm that conducted the poll, YouGov, “is the world leader in Internet polling and is highly respected within the academic community. Given the increasingly dismal response rates for phone surveys, representative Internet polls such as those conducted by YouGov for the UT/TT Poll represent the future of public opinion research.”